AFTER SETTLING INTO his own apartment, Eizerman threw himself into his studies with gusto. He worked the first day without a break from morning until late at night, forgetting all about food and rest. During that day his attitude to Kapluner’s method of instruction changed significantly. Unexpectedly he found the lessons Kapluner had assigned held great interest for him and possessed their own kind of fascination. The task of retelling the story of “Grateful Vanya” in his own words in Russian captivated Eizerman by its enormous difficulty; while composing “Russian sentences” with great effort, which, of course, were neither “Russian” nor “sentences,” he kept repeating to himself, “Fine! Splendid!” “When one manages to do something especially hard, one develops ‘a taste for learning.’ So what if Kapluner doesn’t allow me to utter a word in Yiddish! So what if my tongue gets twisted pronouncing such difficult sounds as tsiz. Let it! The harder it is, the better, the more interesting, and the more useful.”
The next day, in a cheerful and self-confident frame of mind, Eizerman set off to his lesson with Kapluner. Feeling a surge of energy, he advanced boldly to his decisive battle with Russian grammar like a brave soldier and was confident of victory.
In Kapluner’s room, Eizerman found not only his young teacher but also his father, an older man with a paunch, a rounded, trimmed beard, wearing gold-rimmed glasses. He stood next to the wall with one hand behind his back, holding a fat cigar in the other. His son, the younger Kapluner, was sitting at the table, his head bowed, listening to his father’s words, doodling dreamily with a pencil on a piece of paper.
When Eizerman entered the room, the elder Kapluner was saying in a decisive and insistent tone of voice, “Nevertheless, I repeat, it’s essential to maintain ‘decorum.’ ”
Upon seeing Eizerman come in, he asked, “Is this your new pupil?”
“Yes!” replied his son, raising his head, as if awakened. Standing up from his place at the table, he added firmly, “I’m going to work with him now.”
“Never mind; he can wait a little,” his father replied; an expression appeared on his face as if he’d just tasted some nasty tobacco. “Sit down!” he said, addressing Eizerman.
A shadow of dissatisfaction flitted across young Kapluner’s face, but he held his tongue and asked unwillingly, “I don’t understand what you’re referring to as ‘decorum.’ To go to synagogue every morning—is that ‘decorum’ in your opinion?”
“No one’s forcing you to go to synagogue every day,” his father replied in discontent. “You know I don’t attend services on weekdays. But on holidays, and sometimes on the Sabbath, it is proper to go to the synagogue.”
“But why? I ask you, why? To ask God for ‘dew and rain’?1 That’s hypocrisy!”
“It’s not hypocrisy at all! The whole town knows very well that I’m not devout, and yet I go the synagogue on the Sabbath. A person should establish himself within accepted boundaries once and for all, so that people don’t regard him as a charlatan, don’t point their fingers at him. . . .”
“No! I’m asking you about something else!” His son interrupted him in a more excited manner. “Explain to me why it is that you draw the boundaries precisely there? Why, for example, do you consider it acceptable to drink tea openly from a samovar on the Sabbath, but in your opinion, it’s not permitted to smoke a cigarette?2 Why is that so?”
“I’ll tell you why. Because a person should establish definite boundaries for himself once and for all. A person who doesn’t establish any boundaries, might do God knows what!”3
His son shrugged his shoulders impatiently and made no reply.
“Have you ever seen,” his father began again, after a brief silence, “how in the winter little boys race downhill on their sleds?”
“So?”
“Have you seen them? Well, when I look at you—you and your comrades—it seems to me that you, too, are heading down the same kind of slippery slope! The boy on a sled probably thinks that the fact that he’s racing downhill is a matter of his own reason or will. It’s only when he smashes against a wall or a rock that he figures out that he’s not the one steering the sled, but that the sled is steering him. . . .”
“Why use that example?” his son interrupted him impatiently.
“Wait, you’ll see,” observed his father with discontent, once more with an expression as if he’d tasted some nasty tobacco. “You’re also racing downhill and you think your action contains some wisdom or bravery. . . . But, in my opinion, it’s much wiser to descend a slippery slope slowly and carefully, to be able to stop where and when necessary! Yes. . . . But you don’t understand that! You think one should destroy all barriers as quickly as possible. Three days ago I dropped in on Maksimovich and found your friend Kevesh sitting there eating pork. . . . The lad, no bigger than a grasshopper, son of a coachman, can’t read a word of Yiddish—and now, as soon as he enters the gymnasium, he seizes upon some pork! Quite the hero!”
Kapluner’s father uttered these last words with disgust and, turning abruptly to face Eizerman, asked, “You come from the yeshiva, of course?”
“No . . . from home . . . ,” replied Eizerman, taken aback.
“You probably ran away? Who’s your father? A schoolteacher? A ritual slaughterer? A rabbi’s assistant?”
“No, simply a devout Jew. . . .”
“And when you arrived in M., the first thing you did, of course, was sell your tefillin and buy some pork sausage, right?”
Eizerman blushed deeply and made no reply.
“Listen to me, young man!” Kapluner’s father began in a persuasive tone. “As you can see, I’m not a fanatic, and I’m far from being a devout Jew. But as far as the ‘Enlightenment’ is concerned, I can run circles around the lot of you, ones like you and my son. But I’ve lived on earth for a while and I know how to live. Listen to me! Don’t rush to discard ‘everything Jewish’ immediately, don’t hurry to destroy all barriers! A simple country lad can eat pork and acknowledge nothing. That doesn’t take any wisdom at all! You’ve studied the Talmud, right? Did you study it as one is supposed to do?” he asked, catching Eizerman’s lively gaze.
“Even the Yoyre-Deye . . .”
“You see? I guessed that right away, from your eyes, that you studied the Talmud. . . . He hasn’t and he doesn’t know it. . . . It’s my fault. I sent him to the gymnasium too soon. . . . Now we can’t understand each other; we speak different languages,” he concluded with sorrow.
The young Kapluner laughed derisively, gestured dismissively, and paced the room in silence.
“Wave your arm all you like. I repeat: I very much regret, I can never forgive myself for not making you study the Talmud! Yes! You may be smart and educated, but without knowledge of the Talmud, you’re missing something important. . . . A person who knows the Talmud gains another sense in addition to his five senses; it may even lack a special name, but it shows itself in the subtlety, vitality, and elegance of his thought, in the speed of his reasoning. . . . Like many of your comrades, you lack this sixth sense! Everything you say comes out rather crudely! Even when you state clever things, they seem cumbersome, not subtle, not Jewish. . . .”
“It’s true,” Eizerman blurted out instinctively.
“You see? You understood me!” Kapluner’s father rejoiced. “That’s because you know the Talmud. He has two or three comrades who’ve studied the Talmud, and they understand me. . . . But he doesn’t understand, not one bit!”
Once again an expression appeared on his face as if he’d tasted nasty tobacco.
“Papa! He has his lesson now. . . . We have to study,” his son said with rude entreaty.
“Never mind! It’s no great calamity to miss one session! What I’m telling him is also a lesson!”
The young Kapluner shrugged his shoulders in protest, but made no reply.
“So, as I was saying,” Kapluner’s father addressed Eizerman. “Don’t rush to discard ‘everything Jewish.’ If you’re seeking enlightenment, read, think, study. . . . Have you read the works of Isaac Baer Levinsohn?
“No . . . but I’ve read Hattot Ne’urim,” Eizerman replied.
“Hattot Ne’urim!” repeated Kapluner’s father derisively, with a dismissive gesture. “It’s a fairy tale! A simple story for children! You should read Levinsohn! Don’t read him, study him! You can read all those contemporary writers, those Lilienblums, Gordons, Smolenskins, the way you read fairy tales, fables. . . . But ‘our’ writers, the great thinkers of our age—can’t be read like that. They must be studied carefully, like the Talmud. . . . Hey, after Isaac Baer Levinsohn, our literature went downhill, steeply downhill,” he added with a sigh. “However, if you like,” he added, “read Smolenskin, Lilienblum, and the others. But read them judiciously, without hurrying. . . . The main thing, the most important thing—I advise you—don’t hasten to discard ‘all that’s Jewish. . . .’ ”
“Papa!” said young Kapluner with a certain irritation. “You can be sure that he won’t listen to you, no matter how much advice you give him! If he didn’t listen to his own father, he certainly won’t listen to someone else’s!”
His father winced and a spark of indignation flashed in his eyes; turning abruptly to his son, he said with agitation, in the tone of a deeply offended man, “You should be ashamed to talk like that to me. Me? You compare me to other fathers, to those whose children are forced to run away from home? You think that if you’ve read Pisarev and Turgenev, while I haven’t, that I’m worth nothing and that you have the right to put on airs in my presence? Do me a favor and tell me what you, all of you, can be so proud of? The fact that you attend the gymnasium, when we’re the ones who sent you there to study? That you read clever books, when it’s our best teachers who’ve taught you how to read Russian? That you smoke on the Sabbath, when you know that we fathers won’t beat you or drive you away from home for doing that? Is that what you’re so proud of? Is that the expression of your heroism? You should have tried living in our age, twenty-five years ago, surrounded by thick darkness, when the rabbi and his associates were the all-powerful masters of the town, when reading ancient Hebrew texts or possessing copies of works such as Ha-Torah weha-Pilusufiah4 or the Biur5 was equivalent to an act of self-sacrifice; when people were hounded to death, beaten to within an inch of their lives, shipped off to be soldiers for the least transgression against religion! You should’ve lived back then—you’d have seen what sort of heroes you are! But we endured that battle; we carried the burden on our shoulders. There were only three or four people in the entire town who held the torch of the Haskalah in their hands—and the rest were arrayed against us! We were showered with appalling abuse; they were ready to stone us, to wring our necks, to hound us to death! When one member of our group died, they didn’t want to bury him for a long time; when they finally took him to the cemetery—all the members of the ‘funeral brotherhood’6 got drunk and publicly flogged the corpse amidst bales of laughter and cynical songs!! That’s what took place then. When one of my children died, there was a real celebration in town! They drank vodka in the synagogue to celebrate! Then, when I sent my eldest son to the gymnasium—I was the first to take that step—a crowd of Jews, men and women, took up positions opposite my house and stood there for several days; they showered me and my family with the most terrible abuses and bloody curses. They broke all our windows. That’s the sort of age we lived in! How did we study? Do you think we had teachers, the way you do now? Do you think we knew where to begin? Did we have any books? At midnight, hiding in barns and cellars, risking our own lives—we studied Russian grammar! How? One comrade, who died from consumption, learned the German-Russian dictionary by heart—there was no Yiddish-Russian dictionary yet—that’s how he learned to read Russian. Another comrade memorized the Code of Laws7 in order to learn Russian and the laws at the same time. That’s how we worked! And you? Where’s your heroism? Where are your sacrifices? We committed sins, but we knew why we did so. We also smoked on the Sabbath—yes, we did! But it was to achieve a higher goal. Had it been necessary, we were prepared even to swallow a lit cigarette! And you? For what reason do you smoke on the Sabbath? For what cause do you eat pork? For the sake of some noble goal? You do all this only for your own enjoyment, your own dissoluteness and lack of self-restraint, because ‘a slave prefers a dissolute life.’ ”8
He left the room in haste, slamming the door angrily.
The young Kapluner stood in silence, with an expression of dreary dissatisfaction on his face; he frowned and said to himself, “Hey, it’s no use for him to try to get even with us just because they were also freethinkers in their time! So help me God, it’s better to have a father who’s a fanatic than one like him! At least there’s less conversation and less boasting. . . .”
Turning to Eizerman he added with a smile, “Well, you’ve heard the whole sermon. . . . There’s no time left to study today. I have another lesson. . . . Come again tomorrow.”
Eizerman left Kapluner’s house very agitated. Kapluner senior’s words had made a strong impression on him. Everything he’d said was recognizable, comprehensible, and had elicited sympathy. But at the same time he felt that the conclusions of this “old and genuine maskil,” concealed some large defect, something at odds with the true principles of the Haskalah. Attempting to reconcile these contradictions, Eizerman said to himself: “Of course, the father . . . is talking like a father. . . . In the depths of his soul he probably thinks that ‘everything is permitted’—but as a father, he has to say otherwise. . . . All fathers are like that. . . . But he’s a genuine maskil, a thousand times more so than his son!”
Approaching his apartment, Eizerman caught up with Mirkin and Uler and called out to them.
“We were just coming to see you!” Mirkin said overjoyed.
“Listen!” Uler said excitedly. “Short and sweet: do you want to save another human being? Answer us!”
“What sort of question is that?” Eizerman replied, distraught.
“To save a certain person from absolute ruin,” Uler continued in the same tone. “We need money! Understand? Of course, we don’t have any! Tell me, will you lend us your money for a while?”
“You’ll get it back no later than a week from now, I can vouch for it,” Mirkin inserted awkwardly.
“Of course! There’s nothing to discuss! Take it!” Eizerman exclaimed. “What a pity!” he added bitterly. “Had I known earlier, I wouldn’t have spent any of it. In these last two days I’ve spent a total of forty-two kopecks!”
“We don’t need that piddling amount!” said Uler. “We need all twelve rubles!”
“Oy!” What can we do?” cried Eizerman in a panic. “I have only five rubles and eighty-six kopecks left. . . .”
“What about your tefillin? Did you forget about them? Hand them over—you’ll see what sort of money I can get for them!’
They went into his room and Eizerman handed over his money and tefillin to Uler.
“What a fool! He’s giving away all his money! What will he live on?”
“What do I need?” Eizerman asked in astonishment. “Look at all that I’ve managed to acquire: bread, herring, tea, sugar. . . . This’ll do me for God knows how long!”
With difficulty they managed to convince Eizerman to keep one ruble and eighty-six kopecks for himself.
“You’re causing me real distress,” he repeated with sorrow. “If you took my last kopeck, I’d feel that I’d done a genuine service for another person. But this way it turns out to be only a halfway measure, without taste. . . .”
1. An ancient prayer recited in early December: “And grant dew and rain as a blessing.”
2. Both the samovar and the cigarette require the lighting of fire. Exodus 35:3: “You shall kindle no fire throughout your habitations on the Sabbath day.”
3. Cf. Raskolnikov’s theories in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Serezha’s behavior in Vladimir Jabotinsky’s novel The Five.
4. A religious-philosophical essay (1827) written by the Austro-Italian scholar Isaac Samuel Reggio (1784–1855), in answer to the rabbis of the old school who protested against the establishment of the rabbinical college at Padua.
5. Moses Mendelssohn’s literal German translation of the Pentateuch (1783) with a commentary, or biur, written largely by Solomon Dubno (1738–1813), a grammarian and Hebraist.
6. A Jewish charitable group of volunteers that oversaw burials.
7. An abbreviated volume of the Jewish legal code compiled by Solomon Ganzfried (1804–86) in 1870.
8. From the Gemara, the part of the Talmud that contains rabbinic commentaries and analysis.